Page-Turner Family History

Wricklemarsh seat of Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt   (c.1695 – 1775) Sir Gregory Page. the second baronet, was 30 when he succeeded his father and in the following year, he married Martha, daughter of Robert Kenward of Yalding, Kent. This Sir Gregory appears not to have concerned himself greatly with the family business. Indeed he had probably little need to do so for with his father’s accumulated fortune, substantially ’ augmented by the successful South Sea speculation, he was described as “ the richest commoner in England ”. He greatly extended his father‘s small Greenwich property by investment in real estate with the following purchases which made him one of the most important land-owners in south-east England. Thus, when Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt,  came into his rights as head of the family only two or three members lived at Greenwich. With neither a family to worry about nor a living to be earned, Gregory Page set about devoting the middle years of his life to the pur...

"The Free & Easy Society Under the Rose ",  Sir Gregory Page, 2nd bt 1689–1775 Members Club           A Chinese Imari Punch Bowl,   Kangxi,  circa 1718 with the arms of  Sir Gregory Page & the "Free and  Easy Society under the Rose," interior detail of the rose in the center of the Punch Bowl. One of Sir Gregory's diversions away from the acquisition of more land and art collecting for  Wricklemarsh, was the founding of the "Free and Easy Society", a dining club. Which is a reminder of the extent to which private societies flourished throughout the eighteenth-century England. other societies of this period being the Order of Bucks and the Hellfire Club, founded by Sir Francis Dashwood 1st. Bart. of West Wycombe. It is not known how many members there were, its form of origin, or the exact date of the founding of the club; but the following interesting advertisement appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post, from the 2...